COLLEGE, WHAT IT WAS, IS AND SHOULD BE..

Andrew Delbanco’s analysis of American colleges starts with a brief history of their development. 

Delbanco explores the changes in the university system. The biggest impact was the G.I. Bill after World War II. Thousands of young men who would have never thought of going to college (it was for the elite back then) changed college campuses forever. Later, during the Vietnam War, more young men who normally wouldn’t have considered college took the college-deferment.

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

On Campus, Deals With Banks

Mark Volchek, left, and Miles Lasater helped start
 Higher One,  which is criticized for its fees

The New York Times,

By ANDREW MARTIN

Published: May 30, 2012

College campuses have long been attractive hunting grounds for financial institutions. 

In recent years, however, their efforts to woo students have gotten banks and other financial institutions in trouble with regulators. They are now effectively prohibited from providing gifts to students who sign up for credit cards. And the colleges themselves can no longer be paid by the lenders to steer students to student loans .

But many colleges, struggling to offset cuts in state funds and under pressure to keep tuition down, are finding new ways to strike deals with financial institutions, by turning student IDs into debit cards and allowing lenders to take over disbursement of financial aid.

In a recent report the United States Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, found that nearly 900 colleges and universities have card partnerships with financial institutions; in some instances, the colleges receive hefty payments from banks for the exclusive access to students; in other instances, the schools save money by outsourcing financial functions to banks or other vendors.

Since the financial institution’s logo is often stamped on campus IDs, students may sign up for an account because they believe the university has endorsed the product, the report says.

The biggest player in the field is Higher One, which was started by three Yale undergraduates in 2000 and now has contracts with 520 college campuses, the report says. The company’s fees hve prompted complaints at Western Washington University and a handful of other campuses.  But Miles Lasater, one of the co-founders, said his company has provided a valuable service for colleges and universities and a good deal for students. Student accounts are meant to be free, he said, and students are charged only for optional services. Read The Article

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

“We have a crisis in education" said Coleman who takes over as President of the College Board in October

David Coleman says the College Board’s mission
goes beyond measuring and testing to “designing high-quality
curriculum.”

The New York Times

By TAMAR LEWIN

Published: May 16, 2012

David Coleman, an architect of the common core curriculum standards that are being adopted in nearly all 50 states, will become the president of the College Board, starting in October.

The College Board, a membership organization of high schools and colleges that administers the SAT, the Advanced Placement program and other standardized tests, helped design the standards — an outline of what students should learn in English and math from kindergarten through high school — meant to ensure that all high school graduates are prepared for college.

Mr. Coleman’s new position will involve a continued focus on college readiness. “We have a crisis in education, and over the next few years, the main thing on the College Board’s agenda is to deliver its social mission,” he said in an interview on Tuesday. “The College Board is not just about measuring and testing, but designing high-quality curriculum.” Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

“College” was more or less a synonym for success. We had only to go, to Count on a Career..

The New York Times

By FRANK BRUNI

Published: April 28, 2012

FOR a long time and for a lot of us, “college” was more or less a synonym for success. We had only to go. We had only to graduate. And if we did, according to parents and high-school guidance counselors and everything we heard and everything we read, we could pretty much count on a career, just about depend on a decent income and more or less expect security. A diploma wasn’t a piece of paper. It was an amulet.

And it was broadly accessible, or at least it was spoken of that way. With the right mix of intelligence, moxie and various kinds of aid, a motivated person could supposedly get there. College was seen as a glittering centerpiece of the American dream, a reliable engine of social mobility.

I’m not sure things were ever that simple, but they’re definitely more complicated now. And that was an unacknowledged backdrop for the pitched debate last week about federal student loan rates and whether they would be kept at 3.4 percent or allowed to return to 6.8 percent. That was one reason, among many, that it stirred up so much anxiety and got so much attention. Read More

College Sticker price has a real chilling effect!

The New York Times

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER

Published: April 13, 2012

Last fall, the Department of Education began requiring that colleges and universities install a “net price calculator” on their Web sites. The calculators estimate how much a student might actually have to pay, based on parents’ income, family circumstances and other factors that would guide a financial aid office at a particular campus. The goal, according to the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, is to “help potential degree seekers better understand which schools they can afford to attend and how much debt they will have to take on to get a degree.”

How is it working so far?

Like all things in their infancy, there are growing pains. For one, with the diversity of calculator options, comparisons between schools can be difficult. Many universities and colleges use a template provided by the Department of Education. Others have built their own, with more detailed surveys of users. More than 650 campuses subscribe to a calculator provided by a company called Student Aid Services. About 330 institutions use the version developed by the College Board.

“I tend to describe these as being good ballpark estimates of affordability, but not yet suitable for comparing colleges,” says Mark Kantrowitz, an expert on financial aid who founded the Web site finaid.org. “You can’t tell the difference between home plate and center field,” he says.

And so we asked a few currently enrolled students to test out the calculators using their own financials. They gave the calculators mixed reviews, in accuracy and ease in filling out. Read what they said

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

How Well Colleges Do in teaching?

Various standardized tests exist to gauge secondary
 school achievement. A similar system for judging and
comparing colleges may be taking shape.

The New York Times

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

Published: April 7, 2012

How well does a college teach, and what do its students learn? Rankings based on the credentials of entering freshmen are not hard to find, but how can students, parents and policy makers assess how well a college builds on that foundation?

That information exists has often been hidden from public view. But that may be changing.

In the wake of the No Child Left Behind federal education law, students in elementary, middle and high schools take standardized tests whose results are made public, inviting anyone to assess, however imperfectly, a school’s performance. There is no comparable trove of public data for judging and comparing colleges.

Pieces of such a system may be taking shape, however, with several kinds of national assessments — including, most controversially, standardized tests — gaining traction in recent years. More than 1,000 colleges may be using at least one of them.  Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

College Graduates in every major should understand software fundamentals

Mark LeBlanc teaches  “Computing
for Poets” in conjunction with
 English courses at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass

The New York Times

By RANDALL STROSS

Published: March 31, 2012

Many professors of computer science say college graduates in every major should understand software fundamentals. They don’t argue that everyone needs to be a skilled programmer. Rather, they seek to teach “computational thinking” — the general concepts programming languages employ.

At the college level, computer science courses intended for non-majors run a gamut. In some classes, students start coding right away with a mainstream language. Others exclude programming and examine social and ethical issues related to computer use.

At Carnegie Mellon, students who are not computer science majors are invited to try “Principles of Computation.” It starts with a history of computation, but in Week 2, students start learning the programming language Ruby. Then the course covers iteration, recursion, random number generators and other topics.

Tom Cortina, who teaches the course, says that some students perceive the programming as challenging, especially those who aren’t majoring in a field of science, technology, engineering or mathematics and are not accustomed to “the preciseness required.”

At Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., Mark D. LeBlanc, a professor of computer science, teaches “Computing for Poets.” The only prerequisite, according to the course syllabus, is “a love of the written (and digital) word.”

Professor LeBlanc has his students learn the basics of Python, another modern language used in the software industry. But this course is tied to two courses offered by the English department on J.R.R. Tolkien and Anglo-Saxon literature. Students in the computing course put concepts to immediate use by analyzing large bodies of text. The syllabus is more like what one would find for a humanities course.

“In the class, we take on big problems,” Professor LeBlanc says. “The majority of the students are overwhelmed — ‘Where do we start?’ ” This provides opportunities to illustrate the concept of decomposition, which he describes as “breaking a large problem into small manageable problems.”

Professor LeBlanc estimates that just 5 percent of students who enroll each semester find it “worse than a foreign language” and drop the course. He believes that most graduates of Wheaton, a liberal arts college, will work in fields where they must learn how to program. The liberal arts college offers “a safe place to be a novice,” he says.

At many other campuses, computer science departments introduce computational thinking by sparing students from learning an industrial-strength programming language in order to try applying the general concepts. Instead, students learn visual scripting languages that produce interactive animation. Scratch, which was developed for elementary and middle-school students, is one such language.  Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

The Results of the Bike-Sharing Progrm at NYU Are in!

The New York Times

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEYPublished: March 21, 2012

For the past two years, New York University has had a 30-bike pilot program with 10 locations for its students and employees. 

The program is but a fraction of the 600 rental stations and 10,000 bikes that will make up the city’s ambitious program, which is to begin this summer. But N.Y.U.’s program does suggest that bike-share programs can work in New York City.

On Wednesday, the university added 45 bicycles and made the program permanent.

“The demand was very quickly outstripping supply,” said Jeremy Friedman, the manager of sustainability initiatives for the university, who has been working with students to organize the bike-share program.

The program started in 2008, when Julia Ehrman, a student and cycling fan, sought to repair old and used bicycles for students to ride. But the cost was too high, so Ms. Ehrman applied with a friend for a grant from the university, and they were given $13,000.

After they found that the used bikes were too expensive to repair, they reached a deal with Hudson Urban Bicycles to purchase 30 Biria bikes that the shop had bought for the city’s Summer Streets events.

Then they enlisted some seniors studying computer technology in the arts to design a type of technology so that students could swipe their student identification card to obtain a bicycle. Read More

College Hunt Starts Earlier

The New York Times

By JENNY ANDERSON

Published: March 6, 2012

Pictured here are freshmen at Léman Manhattan Preparatory School, a for-profit institution, reviewing sample college applications. Nonprofit schools are more likely to delay the college process to junior year. 

At Avenues,  a for-profit school scheduled to open this fall in Chelsea, college counseling will begin with students in ninth grade. Similarly,Léman Manhattan, a for-profit school downtown, starts the formal college search process with its freshmen; in addition, seventh- and eighth-grade students can visit campuses on a three-day trip in the spring. 

But at the Trinity School and Ethical Culture Fieldston School, two elite private schools, the college planning process does not get under way until 11th grade, a tradition administrators actively work to preserve. To begin any earlier, they say, would put undue pressure on students.

Established nonprofit private schools and new for-profit ones are taking divergent approaches to a question that vexes almost every parent and student headed into thecollege admissions thicket: Is it better to get a jump on the process but risk turning high school into a staging ground for college admission? Or is it preferable to start later, when students are more developmentally prepared but perhaps missing opportunities to plan hobbies, choose classes and secure summer internships?

That question has special importance for current juniors, as they begin to narrow their list of top choices and plan for college admissions testing.

Gardner P. Dunnan, head of the upper school at Avenues and the former head of the Dalton School and the School at Columbia University, is a proponent of beginning early. “I believe the process should start in the ninth grade in terms of really thoughtful planning of the high school career,” he said. An early start, he said, allows students to focus on an area of mastery — a critical tenet of the Avenues curriculum — and showcase that for colleges. Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

A tablet offers a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience

The New York Times

By JULIE BOSMAN and MATT RICHTEL

Published: March 4, 2012

Can you concentrate on Flaubert when Facebook is only a swipe away, or give your true devotion to Mr. Darcy while Twitter beckons?

People who read e-books on tablets like the iPad are realizing that while a book in print or on a black-and-white Kindle is straightforward and immersive, a tablet offers a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks.

E-mail lurks tantalizingly within reach. Looking up a tricky word or unknown fact in the book is easily accomplished through a quick Google search. And if a book starts to drag, giving up on it to stream a movie over Netflix or scroll through your Twitter feed is only a few taps away.

That adds up to a reading experience that is more like a 21st-century cacophony than a traditional solitary activity. And some of the millions of consumers who have bought tablets and sampled e-books on apps from Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble have come away with a conclusion: It’s harder then ever to sit down and focus on reading.  Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

The 12 Smartest Cars for College Students

Submitted by
Bestcollegesonline.com

That 'beater' you’ve been driving around in high school is on its last legs, and you need a new ride to take you to college.

Because the funds you’re working with are the result of your job in the fast-food industry, it needs to be a cheap car. And your parents will make a bunch of noise unless you get something that scores well on safety tests. Fortunately, carmakers have plenty of offerings for you to choose from. Although smart cars have pretty much reached the end of their 15 minutes of fame, here are a dozen cars, including some used options, that are smart choices for college students.
VOLKSWAGEN JETTA
KIA FORTE
FORD FIESTA
CHEVROLET EQUINOX
2002 TOYOTA PRIUS
KIA SOUL
CHEVROLET CRUZE
TOYOTA TACOMA
HYUNDAI ELANTRA
KIA OPTIMA
2001 HONDA CIVIC
HONDA FIT 
Read More



I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

FLORIDA 3 DAY JUNE 11th OPEN TOUR - Florida Public Universities (FLL Originating)

This Florida College Campus tour is conveniently departing from South Florida on June 11th, 2012. The tour is open to students from any high school who can choose to travel with their parents or travel unaccompanied.

Visiting as many college and university campuses as you can is a great way to learn which college is right for you. Is your best fit a college in a rural, or metropolitan area? How far do you want to be from home? Do you prefer a campus with a large student population, or a smaller one? Which university offers the academic programs that will launch your targeted job field or graduate program? This tour of six of the eleven highly esteemed Florida public universities will give you an opportunity to view firsthand the character and diversity that each of these institutions of higher education offer. You will explore UCF, UNF, FSU, UF, USF and FGCU. Enjoy your journey as you learn more about each university's offerings, yourself, and your best college match!

Click here to view the itinerary

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

The Private Sector to Build and Finance On-Campus Dormitories.

The New York Times
By RONDA KAYSEN
Published: January 24, 2012

With state budgets tight and demand for a college education at a high point, public universities across the country are increasingly turning to the private sector to build and finance on-campus dormitories.

Even before the recession, states found that companies that specialize in student housing could build residence halls more rapidly and cheaply than universities could. They can ease the burden of being a landlord. And perhaps most important, these partnerships free capital for facilities like classrooms and laboratories.

But as bad economic times make these arrangements even more appealing, the new efforts raise questions about how private ownership of dorms will affect student life and costs in years to come.

Public universities that have entered into or are considering such partnerships include the University of California, Irvine; Arizona State; Portland State; the University of Kentucky; and Montclair State in New Jersey, which in the fall opened the Heights, a two-tower complex with 2,000 beds and a 24,000-square-foot food court that officials say is the largest residence hall complex in the state. Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

The Ear­ly Ad­mis­sions Fray

The New York Times
By JACQUES STEINBERG and REBECCA R. RUIZ
Published: January 20, 2012

THE big sto­ry con­cern­ing early ad­mis­sions pro­grams this past fall was the re-en­try of Har­vard and Prince­ton into the fray. Both de­cid­ed to re­in­state sin­gle-choice early ac­tion pro­grams be­gin­ning with the class of 2016.

While those who are ac­cept­ed un­der such pro­grams have un­til May 1 to de­cide wheth­er to at­tend, pro­spec­tive stu­dents are pro­hib­it­ed from put­ting in ap­pli­ca­tions early to any oth­er col­lege. The re­sult? More than 4,200 ap­plied early to Har­vard and more than 3,400 to Prince­ton. Sev­er­al com­pet­ing in­sti­tu­tions saw their ap­pli­ca­tions flat­ten over the pre­vi­ous year, if not drop. Still, the University of Penn­syl­vania has re­served a­bout half the seats in the in­com­ing fresh­man class for such ap­pli­cants, just as it had last year. So have Johns Hopkins, Co­lum­bi­a and Middlebury.

Ear­ly pro­grams have long been de­bated. Some be­lieve they rush stu­dents to con­clude their col­lege search­es, and fa­vor ap­pli­cants with ac­cess to so­phis­ti­cat­ed col­lege coun­sel­ing. Mean­while, applicants to bind­ing pro­grams can’t com­pare of­fers of fi­nan­cial aid.

The chart here pro­vides a snap­shot of this ac­a­dem­ic year’s early ad­mis­sion sea­son, col­lect­ed from a sam­pling of col­leges by The Times’s Choice blog.

Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

As a Broader Group Seeks Early Admission, Rejections Rise!

The New York Times
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and JENNY ANDERSON
Published: January 13, 2012

Early admission to top colleges, once the almost exclusive preserve of the East Coast elite, is now being pursued by a much broader and more diverse group of students, including foreigners and minorities.

The democratization of the process — and the overall explosion in applicants — made the early-admissions game much tougher this year for the group that has long dominated it: students in prep schools in New York and beyond where the vast majority of seniors apply to their top choices in November in hopes of avoiding the springtime scrum.

“Their odds have definitely decreased,” said Christoph Guttentag, dean of admissions at Duke University. “You can sort of envision the appeal of early decision radiating outward, from the most affluent to the middle class, and westward from the East Coast and then across the Pacific.”

Duke, for example, received 400 early applications this year from California or overseas; in 2005, it was fewer than 100. Haverford College, outside Philadelphia, saw early applications from abroad double this year from last. And at the University of Chicago, there were double-digit rises in the percentage of early applications from black and Hispanic students. Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2012.

We love January. It's an opportunity to start fresh and make all new plans. That includes planning a College Tour for your students. The beginning of the year is a fantastic time to map out a college tour that you'll be doing in the next 12 months.

We can help you create your own itinerary and you can choose the dates that are convenient to both you and the school calendar. Selecting a university ranks high on the list of important life decisions. Students who choose wisely start their careers off on the right foot, while having fun and making lifelong friendships along the way. Now is the time to start preparing for that decision and we are here to help you!

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

What better gift to give your students than a 2012 College Tour

Selecting a university ranks high on the list of important life decisions. Students who choose wisely start their careers off on the right foot, while having fun and making lifelong friendships along the way.

What better gift to give your students than a 2012 College Tour so that they can make their own informed college choice. When high school students want to evaluate a college and its campus there is no substitute for being there!

So contact us about a college tour for your school or check out our list of 'Open Tours' which can be booked by your individual students. Give your students the best gift of all this Holiday Season.... info@collegecampustrips.com

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

THE 10 MOST EDUCATED PEOPLE ON THE PLANET

onlinecolleges.net

For most of us, getting one, two or, more rarely, even three degrees is a struggle. It can take a lot of time, money, and hard work to get through, and many feel a great sense of accomplishment after finishing a bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD program (and rightly so).

There are others out there, however, that make the rest of us look like underachievers, sometimes earning dozens of college degrees over a lifetime. Some have made the pursuit of knowledge their life’s work and give new meaning to the term “professional student.” Others simply earn degrees as a hobby. Whatever the case, you’ll feel like you need to step up your educational game after reading about these collegiate overachievers, who may be among some of the most educated people on the planet.

No. 1 Michael Nicholson (pictured here) has been racking up college degrees since 1963 and doesn’t have any plans to slow down soon. The 67-year-old has taken full advantage the tuition discounts he and his wife get by working at Western Michigan University. Over his lifetime, Nicholson has amassed 27 different degrees, including two associate’s degrees, 19 master’s degrees, three specialist degrees, and one PhD. Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

Digital Textbooks outsell Paper Books, Amazon says

The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE

Amazon, which got its start selling books online, announced this year that, for the first time, its digital books had outsold paper books. This trend of going digital does not hold true for all books: While many popular consumer books have successfully made the switch into the new format, textbooks are still widely read on paper.

Textbooks are gaining, though, as publishers take advantage of the popularity of tablets like the Kindle and iPad, expanding their catalogues and offering products like rental digital books that expire after a semester or two.

The potential for digital growth is leading publishers to experiment with products that stretch the boundaries of traditional textbooks, slowly turning away from static text and images toward a multimedia, intuitive approach, publishers say.

“Textbooks as e-books ought to be seen as a stepping stone to the future,” said Mark Majurey of Taylor & Francis, a textbook publisher in Britain.

Digital textbooks are any books that can be downloaded to an e-reader or computer or those that can be read online using a Web browser. While no one keeps precise numbers of digital textbook sales globally, a number of companies have seen similar growth patterns and nearly identical market share.

According to the Student Monitor, a private student market research company based in New Jersey, about 5 percent of all textbooks acquired in the autumn in the United States were digital textbooks. That is more than double the 2.1 percent of the spring semester. Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

Engineering Students Hit Books the Hardest, a Study Finds

The New York Times
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
November 17, 2011

Students study in the common area and main foyer of Engineering Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Business majors spend less time on course work than other college students, but they devote more hours to nonschool duties, like earning money and caring for family members. In contrast, engineering students spend the most time studying and the least on outside demands.

Those are among the findings released on Thursday from the annual National Survey of Student Engagement, a project that tries to measure how hard, and how effectively, students are working. This year’s results are based on forms filled out last school year by more than 400,000 undergraduates, all of them freshmen or seniors, at nearly 700 colleges and universities in the United States.

Grouping students into seven academic disciplines, the study shows wide differences in the number of hours they put into schoolwork outside the classroom. Among students concentrating in engineering, 42 percent say they spend at least 20 hours per week on such study, well ahead of any other group.

They are followed, in descending order, by students studying physical sciences, biological sciences, arts and humanities, education and social sciences. Business majors ranked last, with 19 percent saying they spend 20 hours or more each week on schoolwork.

As the hours spent studying decline, the hours given to other duties increase. Business majors spend the most time at paying jobs, averaging 16 hours a week, while engineering students spend the least, 9 hours. Education and business majors also have the heaviest family responsibilities. Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

Princeton Is Swamped in Early Applications

The New York Times
By JACQUES STEINBERG
Published: November 10, 2011

Princeton canceled its early-admission program four years ago to delay the beginning of the annual frenzy of applicants hoping to secure a precious seat in the next freshman class. But when none of their main competitors followed suit, they announced in February that they would once again offer applicants an opportunity to apply in November, two months before the regular deadline.



The response, at least at Princeton, was a flurry of early applicants. A spokesman said Tuesday night that 3,547 students had applied by last week’s deadline through the university’s “single-choice early-action” program. That figure is nearly triple the size of the entire freshman class.

It appears among about 100 colleges and universities queried, that early applications to some highly selective colleges were up, despite the pinch that the economic downturn has placed on families’ college savings accounts. (Those who apply under early-decision programs commit in advance to enroll if accepted, and lose the ability to compare other colleges’ financial aid offers; early-action programs like Princeton’s are not binding on applicants.)

Duke, for example, said that 2,716 students had applied under its binding early-decision program, a 23 percent increase over last fall. Johns Hopkins said it had received 1,440 applications to its binding program, an increase of nearly 8 percent. And nearly 1,800 applied through Dartmouth’s early-decision program, a 2 percent increase.

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

Freshmen gain 15 pounds in their first year of college: But is this a myth?

The New York Times
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: November 7, 2011

Everyone knows that college freshmen typically gain 15 pounds in their first year of college: the notorious “freshman 15.”

But what everyone “knows” may be a myth.

According to a new study, freshmen actually gain an average of 2.5 to 3.5 pounds, and the weight gain has little to do with college attendance.

Researchers at the Ohio State University reviewed data from 7,418 interviews with subjects ages 17 to 20 and found that first-year students, both men and women, gained about 3 pounds during the year. Heavy drinkers gained more, and those who had a job gained less than those who did not. But income, poverty and living in a dorm had no statistically significant effect.

The study, published in the December issue of the journal Social Science Quarterly, also found that young adults who do not go to college gain weight — about a half pound less than college students of the same age. In other words, college attendance has almost no effect on weight gain.

“There are lots of things to worry about when you go to college,” said the lead author, Jay L. Zagorsky, a research scientist at Ohio State. “But gaining weight is not one of them. Worry about flunking your courses and whether you’re going to like your roommates. Don’t worry about a myth.”

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

College Application Essay. For Some, 500 Words Aren’t Enough

The New York Times
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER
Published: October 28, 2011

Penn Weinberger had grown attached to his college admissions essay. The topic — coping with a brother’s attention deficit disorder — was important to him. The anecdotes clicked. The characters had dimension. The meaning, as his teachers at Hunter College High School had long advised him, was shown, not told.

The only problem with Penn’s writing was the math: It was 650 words, outside the 250- to 500-word range re-established by the Common Application this spring — after a four-year experiment with no upper limit — but only now being grappled with as deadlines for early admissions approach next week.

“I just had to chop down all the emotion,” Penn said.

Unlike other parts of the application, which, in its online version, cuts students off midword if they exceed character limits, the personal statement will not be truncated, raising the question in school corridors: Does 500 really mean 500?

In a word, no. In two words, kind of.

“If a student uploaded a 500,000-word essay, there’s nothing we could do,” said Rob Killion, executive director of Common Application, which is accepted by more than 400 colleges and universities. “However, we do ask that all students follow the same rules their peers are following.”

Mr. Killion said the limit was reinstated after feedback that essays had grown too long. But colleges are not told if essays exceed the limit.

Jon Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School, agreed that concise writing was laudable but said the implication of a strict limit was misleading. “I worry about that kid who’s written 530 and thinks he has to cut 30 words,” he said. “It just puts another stage of anxiety in front of these kids.”

Jeffrey Brenzel, dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, said he did not stop reading if an essay ran long, but “if they go over the limit, the stakes go up.”
Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

Where to Park on Campus? If you come after 10 o'clock you may not find a space at all!

The New York Times
By ZUSHA ELINSON
October 8, 2011

After winning a Nobel Prize on Tuesday, Saul Perlmutter, a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, gave an energetic talk about his discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace to a roomful of admirers and journalists.

Mr. Perlmutter received another distinction that comes with the prize: one of the very few permanently reserved and free parking spaces on the university’s busy campus.

“Probably the single most important thing about the Nobel Prize for most people is whether they get the coveted parking space on campus,” Mr. Perlmutter said.

The crowd erupted in howls of laughter as Chancellor Robert Birgenau leapt onto the stage and handed Mr. Perlmutter his golden Nobel laureate parking pass.

“Now, it’s all been worthwhile,” Mr. Perlmutter said.

He was joking — sort of.

The spots are the envy of all. Not even the chancellor gets a parking space that is free or reserved for life.

Parking is hard to find on the downtown Berkeley campus. The university has nearly 50,000 students, faculty and staff members at any given time, and only about 7,000 parking spaces to go around.

Parking permits have been wryly called “hunting licenses” because students and faculty members must often search at length for an available space, most of which are unassigned.

“If you come early enough in the morning, you can find a parking space,” said Robert Littlejohn, another physics professor. “But if you come after 10 or 11 o’clock, you might not find one at all.”

Mr. Littlejohn said he gave up driving to campus years ago. Instead, he rides a bicycle, in part, he said, to avoid the “parking hassles” and the cost of a faculty permit on central campus, nearly $1,500 a year. Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

Can Antioch College Return From the Dead Again?

The New York Times
By BILL DONAHUE

The long corridors of Antioch Hall are dark. The fluorescent lights, perhaps 50 years old and never updated, do not work. The vinyl floor tiles are loose. There are cobwebs and puddles on the floor, and the whole place smells of mold. You have to squint, almost, to picture this four-story brick building as the birthplace of one of the most vaunted experiments in American higher education.

Antioch College held its first classes in 1853. There were women among the school’s early students, as called for in the charter of the Christian Connexion, the church group that founded Antioch amid the cornfields and forests of Yellow Springs, Ohio. Blacks soon matriculated as well. In the decades that followed, Antioch flourished as a cradle of social activism and freethinking. It was the most liberal of liberal arts colleges. Yet Antioch College has been on shaky financial ground for its entire existence. Four times — in 1863, 1881, 1919 and 2008 — it has had to close.

Next month, it will reopen again. The college has been sending recruiters to college fairs nationwide for a year now, eventually hoping to draw brainy iconoclasts willing to pay $35,000 in annual tuition and room and board. The plan is to have 110 students next year and 1,200 students in a decade or so. But when Antioch kicks off the school year on Oct. 4, it will do so as a sort of nanoschool, having chosen to commence with just 35 freshmen from a pool of 145 applicants. This starter batch of students will enjoy four-year full scholarships, paid for with the interest earned from Antioch’s $25 million endowment. Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com